Why Leica/ Leitz at all?

[matteohamilton]

what is the best color film to use with the m7? Prints and slides.......

 

[hektor]

Matthew,

My preference is always slides. I prefer the quality of prints from slides as well.

My wife and I only use colour negative (Fuji NPH @ 200 ISO) in her Minilux-Zoom for "happy snaps" as Sal would say.

Have fun.

Justin

 

[gjames52]

Posted on Friday, February 18, 2005 - 3:22 am:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As I stated before, buy new or there won't be Hasselblad or Leica.

So, before it is too late and Hasselblad writes a letter like the following from Leica think about how you are supporting the company.

BTW. Since receiving previous letters from Leica the following is not unexpected.

Dated February 17, 2005

Dear Leica friends,

Leica Camera AG, Solms, expects the existence of a loss
in the amount of half of its registered share capital in March
2005. The Company’s Board of Management will make a
corresponding announcement according to section 92 (1) of
the German Stock Corporation Law (AktG) at a General
Meeting to be held on May 31, 2005. Concurrently, the
Board of Management prepares a turnaround strategy.


Further information:
http://www.leica-camera.com/


With best regards,
Leica Camera AG
Corporate Communications
http://www.leica-camera.com/produkte/service/newsletter/index_e.php3

 

[agp]

Tell me I'm not mad! In this month's 'Black and White photography' magazine, a famous photographer called Busselle has written about how he has sold all his 35mm and medium format equipment and gone to digital. That started me looking. Guess what? I have sent two almost new MP bodies, a number of top Leica lenses and my almost new film scanner to Ffordes in Scotland. A Canon EOS 1DS Mark II is now on order. I looked at reviews of this camera after reading Busselle's article, and a significant number of them say that it beats even medium format. All of them say it beats 35mm. Admittedly it costs £4700, but that is a fraction of what the Leica stuff will go for.
i will shortly, then, be leaving this forum - just waiting for rude replies to this posting (joke, I hope!). Also, why have I been spending large chunks of my time developing anmd scanning film, two or three hours for 36 images.} I just hope that the pictures are better, and I can lift the great heavy thing! I'm sure the first will be true, not sure about the second.

 

[jamesw]

Well, since you've already sent your Leica gear off and ordered the digicam I suppose its a bit too late to comment. However, I think its the old toss-up between quality and convenience. The digicam will be more convenien t and easy, but the same quality won't be there.

However, for my 2 cents... Since I'm in the film biz I have quite a few buddies who are cinematographers/ lighting cameramen, and know of quite a few more. None of them have digital equipment, or even think that digital will replace 35mm as the standard feature film stock in the next 5-10 years or so. All of them have Leicas though, funnily enough. One of them recently wrapped on Harry Potter, the other on The Corpse Bride.

Think about that for a moment. Firstly, 35mm is the cinema standard, not 70mm, and its still considered sharp enough to blow up on a huge cinema screen. Secondly, both of those are special effects heavy movies (therefore much more convenient to shoot them on HDCAM SR, or one of the other high definition video formats (the feature I'm editing right now was shot on HDCAM, but that was for cost reasons, not quality). Hollywood spends a lot of money on film stock, when HD stock is relatively very very cheap, and yo u can bet your ass if they felt they could lose that spend, they'd drop 35mm film like a hot cake. Lucas obviously felt that the compromise was worth it when he shot the last two Star Wars on HDCAM SR, but that was because those films are almost entirely digital domain (all the backgrounds, everything) the actors are shot bluescreen the whole way through.

Now, the Corpse Bride guy was particularly interesting (I know his father who told me this, in this case, not him personally, in case he reads this forum and thinks 'who?') because its composed of images taken with stills cameras and its the only instance I know about where they did side by side comparisons between film and digital stills cameras to find out what the cost/quality tradeoff was. They picked the best digital, and stills SLRs and, under the same lighting conditions of the same scene, tested them. The film and digital prints were then handled with the optimum quality in mind and they projected them. Apparently, 35mm was still quite clearly better in quality once blown up on a cinema screen (particularly in shadow-detail according to the expert eyes assessing this). However, they ended up shooting with Digital SLRs for cost reasons, because it was considered that although film was ultimately better, that Joe Public wouldn't discern enoug h of a difference to warrant the extra cost of film being used for the animation. I don't know about you, but I rarely find what Joe Public thinks is marvellous very good quality wise (in the 80s, VHS camcorders replaced Super 8mm in the public's eyes, for goodness sake! have you ever seen VHS camcorder footage, its shockingly bad - Super 8mm is wonderful even compare d to modern consumer DV).

I also recently went into a good photographic centre near me (before I decided to stay 35mm and get a Leica) and asked them to show me the best digital prints they had (done on a £60,000 printer - how many films could you develop and print before buying one of those?), mixed in with 35mm prints, without telling me which were which. It didn't take me long, and it was very easy! Have you ever done this? There is always 'noise' of some kin d on even the 'best' digital prints I've ever seen. They look initially impressive (IMO reduced shadow detail and tonal information makes them look more contrasty) but let your eye adjust and you'll see the difference.

So take that as you will. Personally because I'm used to evaluating images fairly closely as an editor, I can tell you that I've yet to see any digita l stills or motion footage that can match good 35mm. The other issue is printing, to get the best quality you have to take those digital pics to a place with a very good, very expensive printer to get anywhere near 35mm, s o you won't be printing at home, which kind of negates the cost-saving of going digital to start with?

However, I hope you enjoy your digital experience and aren't dissapointed with it after using such good 35mm.

All the best, James

 

[agp]

James

Thank you so much for this very full reply. I have no regrets. Already an experienced digital user (from Canon 10D to 20D), they are pretty serious pieces of equipment. I take the school team photos on the 20D and have them processed at Peak Imaging in the UK, and the quality is as good (at 10" x 8") as the professional's medium-format shots taken three years ago before I took over.
I think the evaluation of 35mm as a film stock is not valid. The effect of grain is random, and thus is smoothed out as the film moves from frame to frame. I also print at home with an Epson 2100, and the quality is better than I used to produce with film (and with a great deal more hassle) than years ago. Inkjet printers have improved dramatically in recent years.
The reason I have sold all of the Leica equipment is to pay for this camera - almost 17 megapixels of it! This could turn into a very interesting discussion - it is worth looking up the reviews, by photographers, of the EOS 1DS Mark II.
Though I have just bought a Leica tiepin, to advertise my devotion to the marque, I sent the equipment off with no regrets at all. No more developing, washing or scanning.

 

[jamesw]

Hi Andrew

It sounds like we've had different experiences and read/heard different reports. At the moment, I'm personally not convinced, but obviously you are , which I guess is why I've just bought the Leica and you've just ditched it and bought a digital camera! Obviously this is a current debate and I'm sur e one which will rage among photograpers for a few years to come.

I wouldn't discount the evaluation of 35mm as film stock too quickly though , I gave the ex&le of the Corpse Bride test because as far as I know, it wa s a stills test, not moving image (although the final movie, of course, was). The way it was reported to me, they were evaluating blown up stills side by side. However, I'll check on that, out of my own interest, next time I see my friend. Its worth noting also that they had big reliability problems wit h two different sets of cameras from two top manufacturers - apparently under the heavy shooting schedule the cameras would fail quite regularly. They swapped the whole lot at least once for a different brand, only to have the same problem. It seems that they would attract dust due to static build up and overheat.

However, from my personal point of view, I must also say that there are other reasons I stayed on 35mm and bought a Leica.

One of the reasons I moved over to Leica gear is becase it seems lighter an d much more understated/less obtrusive than SLR gear (digital or otherwise) which I've been using for countless years. I travel a lot, but love wandering round cities and snapping street shots - the SLR gear gets very bulky and is quite conspicuous. A different kind of convenience.

Having recently got an M6 and 35mm lens for £1000 and could get another couple of decent lenses (50 and 90) for another thousand second hand, the digital sounds pretty expensive. Add on the cost of the computer you'll probably need to get the best of it, memory cards, Photoshop, and a very good printer... I could buy and process one heck of a lot of film for that...

The upside about living in the 2000's is that the choice is there at all. I'm totally happy about that as long as my choice to use film doesn't disappear (or become exaggeratedly expensive due to diminished demand). It almost has in the case of Super 8, which is hanging on by a thread, and I can see 35mm going the same way more rapidly than you might think.

A year ago most of the SLRs behind the counter of my local Jessops were 35m m and they had a great trade in second-hand gear, displayed in the window. Th e other day I went in there for the first time in a while (I was in Canada fo r a few months shooting a film). I was quite surprised to see that now there is only one new 35mm body, and no second-hand gear in the window, just digital point and shoots. I think that's sad. A new generation of photographers will probably never even think about using 35mm (and in all likelyhood never learn to use a camera on manual). I asked the guy behind the counter about whether they happened to have any Leica gear and he looke d at me like I'd fallen from the moon, while gesticulating at several Digital SLRs.

The other thing that actually shocked me is that on the same visit, I asked the same poor sales bod about getting a film developed and printed. They don't do any film prints any more apparently and the machine prints even from film are not chemical process, but laser printed. I asked to see a s&le, to see if it was any good... Well, I must say I sent the film off t o trusty old Sky Labs in London instead.

Anyone else care to comment on the 'satisfaction' factor of working on film ? Maybe its because I'm sitting behind a computer editing all day, even if I' m editing from a film source, its all video to me... Possibly why I crave a film experience in my free time? I don't know though. I think its a close analogy to the one between CGI effects in film and the days when they built models and sets and blew them up for real... Oh and real stunt men threw themselves off buildings. I just thought movies were more thrilling then, when I knew it was 'real'. In the same way CGI doesn't have the thrill factor, so too I find digital photography the 'dead' - its somehow intangible, not real...

Sorry, but I've thought about this a lot and there are so many reasons for me personally that I don't like it I could go on all day, so I'll cut this short now! However, I do respect your decision based on your own experience s to make the choice you did.

Enjoy your new gear!

James

 

[jim0266]

Andrew,

I understand the allure and there is no right or wrong in any of this. I do wonder why you went for the Mark II and not the 5D, simply on the size of the camera alone. The shooters at the paper where I work use the Mark II's so I've had he chance to play with them. No doubt they make wonderful images but the camera itself is HUGE. My understanding is that the 5D produces images as good as the Mark II but there are other tradeoffs between them, outside of the size issue unrelated to image quality, such as weather sealing, if you need that.

Next you have to ask yourself why you make images and that's no easy task. I am an amateur these days and have the luxuries associated with that nomenclature. I like to take a camera along with me as I go about my life, as you never know when you'll come across an image. I like to think of the camera as a way to document life. I'm not apt to drag along a DSLR like the Mark II because of its size, but perhaps a 5D with a prime on it.

Another issue to consider is the archiving of your images. Film is wonderful in that it's a relatively simple thing to store over long periods of time. It takes some time and thought to archive digital images. Thinking about the archiving issue makes my stomach queasy and my head hurt.

In the interest of full disclosure I own an Olympus E-1. I really love the color I can get out of this camera. It may be the lack of my ability or understanding, but I get color out of the digital I cannot get out of film. The E-1 purchase this year was sparked by a desire to shoot color as I mainly shoot B&W. I still have to decide if I even like to shoot color, but that's a whole different discussion.

Ultimately it comes down to the shooting experience of using an M body over a SLR. I still like the feel and experience of using an M body. A DSLR and a Leica M with film are two different animals, each with strengths and weaknesses.

All the best,
Jim

 

[craigrmurray]

Posted by Andrew Pickup (Agp) on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 3:20 pm:

Tell me I'm not mad! In this month's 'Black and White photography' magazine, a famous photographer called Busselle has written about how he has sold all his 35mm and medium format equipment and gone to digital. That started me looking. Guess what? I have sent two almost new MP bodies, a number of top Leica lenses and my almost new film scanner to Ffordes in Scotland. A Canon EOS 1DS Mark II is now on order. I looked at reviews of this camera after reading Busselle's article, and a significant number of them say that it beats even medium format. All of them say it beats 35mm. Admittedly it costs £4700, but that is a fraction of what the Leica stuff will go for. i will shortly, then, be leaving this forum - just waiting for rude replies to this posting (joke, I hope!). Also, why have I been spending large chunks of my time developing anmd scanning film, two or three hours for 36 images.} I just hope that the pictures are better, and I can lift the great heavy thing! I'm sure the first will be true, not sure about the second.

Andrew: I, too, just bought a Canon EOS (but the 5D, half the weight and price, nearly the same features) plus the 16-35mm f2.8, 24-70mm f2.8, and 70-200mm f2.8 IS. Haven't yet put up the Leica R's for sale, but probably will. I'm bought several R to EOS adapters to use with a few more special purpose lenses that I shoot mostly wide open and manually focus anyway (80 f.14, 60 macro, 15 f3.5, 800 f6.3). Don't forget about adapters before you sell off the glass -- the lenses were Leitz's forte anyway. I can't believe the quality and ease of use for the Canon. With the vertical grip, it hefts about the same as the R9 with motor (a bit lighter, perhaps), and doesn't feel as fragile as I thought a mostly plastic camera would. As much as I didn't want to do it, I just couldn't wait any longer for the DMR. Not only is it $6000, it was supposed to arrive over two years ago, making it a Bronze Age item in today's technological timeline. Why bother? I shall, however, keep all my rangefinder stuff, as it has a different purpose in the photographic scheme of things. Just wanted you to have some positive feedback to balance out your collection of rude replies.

 

[jamesw]

I should have mentioned also that I retained my SLR body and lenses when I bought the Leica - I agree with Jim, its a different tool for different situatoins...